Wilted Mistletoe Still Counts
by JessieJay13
Summary: They don't normally DO this. Any of this, really. The drunk office sex, the awkward dancing around each other, the- Okay, maybe they do the "awkward" part pretty often, but the rest is rather new. Thank god for mistletoe, even if it's recycled. It still works the second time around.


**A/N: Hey look, another story! Not the story you were probably hoping, lol, but a story nonetheless! I wrote this for a christmas secret santa fic exchange on tumblr, but I didn't want to post it before I was finished uploading TF. So here it is now, some really fluffy ArthurxGwen cuteness just a bit late for the holiday season. =D**

* * *

"I slept with my boss."

"Oh, hello, good morning to you too. You did _what_ now?"

Gwen sighed into the receiver, trying to keep a hold of mobile, file folders, briefcase, purse, and hot coffee all at once without tripping off the sidewalk and into traffic. Merlin's shock and alarm was justified, really, but that didn't make it any less embarrassing to have to explain.

She bit the bullet. "I said I slept with my boss."

"Yes, I heard that bit," Merlin said in that tone he used sometimes that said he thought the person he was talking to was slow in the head, "but I was sort of hoping I had imagined it. Are you insane?"

Gwen whined in frustration; she had been looking for _sympathy_ but it sounded like she would be getting a smack upside the head instead. She deserved it, she knew that, but her morning was already not going well so when would karma decide she had suffered enough?

"Yes, yes, I know. In my defense, I was drunk, he was drunk, we were both a little bit very drunk," she said. "And there was mistletoe involved. Mistletoe, Merlin! Put that together with copious amounts of alcohol and someone as ridiculously attractive as Arthur Pendragon and what else would you expect?"

"Oh, I don't know, a little _restraint_ maybe?" Merlin said. "Some common sense? Something that won't put you on Uther Pendragon's radar and ruin your chances of ever actually joining the firm?"

"Oh no, do you really think he would find out about it?" Gwen moaned, scrambling to hold onto her files; one of them was making a concerted effort to escape and she was not in the mood for its shenanigans. "Arthur wouldn't tell him, would he? I mean, I doubt _he_ wants to admit he had a drunken shag during the office Christmas party any more than I do, but—"

" _At_ the Christmas party?" Merlin repeated. "Seriously, Gwen? You didn't even take him home or anything? I thought you had standards!"

"Not after four pints of rum-filled eggnog, I don't."

"Good lord."

"Oh, Merlin, what do I _do_?" Gwen asked as she shouldered her way through the revolving door into the lobby bustling with barristers and their clients. "It's not like I can avoid him like I normally would after making a terrible lapse in judgment with some random guy—I see him every day! I work for the man, there's no avoiding that! I'm going to get fired, Merlin. I absolutely am. I'm going to get fired, aren't I? I can't afford to get fired!"

"Okay, Gwen, take a deep breath," Merlin said soothingly.

Gwen hurried into an empty lift and pressed the close button six times to make sure it stayed empty. Then she leaned her forehead against the shiny metal, closing her eyes so she didn't have to see herself reflected back in all her shameful hussy glory.

"Gwen, sweetheart, it's probably not as big of a deal as you're making it out to be," Merlin said. She could hear the tapping of his pen on his desk, that rhythmic _click click click_ that was never as irritating as it should have been, and for some reason that helped her get a grip.

"You really think so?" she asked, sounding a little bit pathetic even to her own ears.

"Absolutely," Merlin told her. "I mean, it's Arthur Pendragon! Didn't Gwaine tell us he was something of a playboy in uni? With looks like his, I doubt it's the first time he's boned an intern."

" _Merlin_ ," Gwen hissed.

"What?"

Completely unrepentant, as usual. Gwen rolled her eyes, asking herself for the twelve-hundredth time why she had chosen Merlin for her best friend. She wasn't panicking anymore, though, so that particular skill of his probably had something to do with it.

"Look, he probably does this all the time. Just play it cool."

"Do you know me?" Gwen retorted and Merlin snorted.

"Channel your inner me," he suggested.

"Oh, like that will help," Gwen scoffed. "You're not exactly Mr. Cool, Calm, and Collected either. Might I remind you of the time you put your elbow in a bowl of chili when Mithian walked by because you were trying to look casual and unaffected?"

"No, you do not, and you promised you would never bring that up again."

"That's what you get for being unsympathetic about my terrible plight." The lift doors opened and Gwen made her way toward her cubicle, head down just in case anyone had seen her last night and would recognize her as the girl in Arthur Pendragon's office with her skirt hiked up.

"Suck it up, you big baby," Merlin said. "You're not the first intern to have a roll in the hay with her boss. Really, chances are he's already forgotten about it."

"Maybe," Gwen conceded, "but what if he hasn't and he—"

She probably shouldn't have ducked her head quite so far, but in the interest of avoiding awkward confrontations she had forgone looking where she was going. As such, she did not see the man coming around the corner until she collided with his chest. It was a miracle that she managed to hold onto her mobile and her coffee—which was very hot and likely would've hurt them both and also ruined his lovely and expensive suit—but the file folders went everywhere.

Gwen immediately began babbling apologies and, though she did realize objectively that she was yet again speaking too fast to actually be understood, she could never quite seem to _not_ do that. She had already gotten a few mostly-incoherent sentences out before she noticed exactly who it was she had run into. She let out a squeak that did nothing to assuage her complete and utter humiliation.

"Gwen?" came Merlin's tinny voice through her mobile speaker.

"Sorry, gotta go," she mumbled and hit the end call button before stuffing the device in her pocket, all without taking her eyes off of Arthur Pendragon standing in front of her, looking a little shell-shocked by the impact and her uncontrollable flood of indecipherable words.

"Guinevere," Arthur finally said.

"That's me," Gwen said weakly. Then, "I mean, yes, hello. Um. Good morning. Mr. Pendragon, sir."

"I think you can probably get away with calling me 'Arthur' at this point," he said and Gwen was certain that, had she been paler, her blush would have been embarrassingly obvious. Instead of answering, she ducked down to gather up her folders, putting her coffee down on the floor and fighting to keep her purse slung over her shoulder when it was apparently desperately determined to get in her way.

Arthur bent down to help, sweeping loose pages into a pile and offering them back to her. She stuffed them haphazardly into the top file, knowing that she would have to sort them back into their appropriate files eventually but not having enough functioning brain cells to care just yet.

By the time she had everything settled into her arms again, she straightened up to see Arthur holding out her cup of coffee with an almost sheepish expression on his stupidly attractive face. Gwen looked at the cup for a moment, then down at her hands—completely full and, really, how had everything been arranged _before_ she'd dropped it all? She'd had a hold of it then!

Arthur seemed to notice her frustration because he nodded and retracted the offer. He ran his other hand through his hair.

"Guinevere," he said with a glance around them. "About last night—"

"It's fine," she said quickly, her curls bouncing into her face as she shook her head. She hoped against hope that none of her hair would get stuck in her lipstick because she didn't have any hands free to fix it if it did and that would be even more embarrassing. "It was a party. It happens all the time! Well, not _all_ the time. Obviously not _all_ the time. But it did this time and there's nothing wrong with that. Anyway, I'm a professional, so I won't let it affect the workplace environment. Not to imply that you _aren't_ a professional," she added, just to be clear. "I mean, I'm sure you wouldn't let it interfere with anything either."

Arthur had his eyebrows raised by now so Gwen pressed her lips together to stop the flow of words before she could dig an even deeper hole for herself. If only it were a _real_ hole and she could hide in it and never be seen again.

"Of course not," Arthur said. "That's not what I was going to say. I'm not worried about that. Look, I just...I don't normally do... _this_."

He made a vague sort of gesture between them and it was Gwen's turn to raise a curious eyebrow.

"You mean sleep with interns, or acknowledge it afterward?"

She nearly kicked herself as soon as the words were out of her mouth—completely without her brain's permission—but Arthur just let out a startled sort of laugh.

"Er, the former," he said. "Although, logically speaking, if the former is true then the latter must be as well."

"Not exactly," Gwen countered. "It's impossible to acknowledge or not acknowledge something that hasn't happened, so it cannot be either true or untrue. It becomes a moot point."

Arthur smiled, bright and wide and more genuinely amused than Gwen had ever seen from him. "Miss Smith, you just won your case."

Gwen told herself the warm fluttery feeling in her stomach was because of the praise for her rhetorical skill and not because it was Arthur giving it to her. She couldn't help but smile back though. Arthur ducked his head, scratching at the back of his neck. Then he held up her coffee and gave it a little shake.

"I'll walk you to your desk," he said. "Make sure no one else runs into you on the way."

Gwen let him lead the way, flustered enough to worry that, if left to her own devices, she might actually forget where her own cubicle was. She dumped the files on her desk when they reached it, slung her purse on the back of her chair, and dropped the briefcase that had miraculously managed to not get dropped any point during the hectic morning on the floor. Arthur held out her coffee for the third time and she finally took it back. She was shamefully aware of the moment when their fingers brushed and mentally berated herself for being a love-struck teenager.

"Thank you," she said.

"Anytime," he said with a lopsided smile. One of his front teeth was crooked. It was depressingly endearing and Gwen had to look away.

"Well, hopefully you won't have occasion to do it again. I'll look where I'm going and try not to run into you again. Sorry about that."

"It's alright," he said. "I didn't mind."

Gwen stared at him for a moment, her brain full of a blank buzzing that was trying very hard to convince her that Arthur Pendragon was flirting with her even though that was patently ridiculous.

Someone called Arthur's name from across the room before Gwen could pull herself together enough to respond in any way.

"I'll let you get back to work," he said, rapping his knuckles on her desk. He smiled at her again before retreating into his office with Leon at his side.

Gwen dropped into her desk chair hard enough to make it almost roll out from under her. She pulled out her mobile to see four text messages from Merlin, all of them demanding to know what had just happened and if that had been Arthur she hung up on him for. She texted him back.

 _Rising Sun 6, need drinks and girl talk_

* * *

"Why do you always call me for your girl talk?" Merlin asked, more resigned and curious than annoyed. "You do realize that I'm not a girl, right?"

"You're my gay best friend," Gwen said, swiping one of Merlin's chips off his plate.

Merlin tried to snatch it back, failed, and settled for pulling his plate outside of Gwen's reach instead. "That would be an acceptable answer if I were gay but, as it happens, I'm not."

"No, but you're secure enough in your masculinity to play the part when I really need it."

"Why can't I be your gay best friend?" Gwaine dropped down into the seat next to Gwen, beer already in hand. "I like men as much as you do!"

"You invited Gwaine?" Gwen asked Merlin, jerking her thumb over her shoulder at Gwaine's grinning face with all the exasperation she could put into the gesture.

Merlin shrugged, sipping his drink innocently. "You want to gush about Arthur Pendragon, don't you?" he asked. "I've never even met the man. What good am I going to be? I figured I'd invite the only other person who actually knows him."

" _And_ someone who can appreciate his fine arse," Gwaine said, shaking his head. "Damn fine arse on that man."

Gwen opened her mouth to object but closed it again with a sigh. "Fine, you can stay. And not just because I agree with you wholeheartedly on the subject his arse. Which I do."

Across the table, Merlin mouthed "you're welcome" at her. Gwen leaned over to steal another of Merlin's chips, only this time she threw it at him. Merlin gave her a terribly affronted look and retrieved the chip only for Gwaine to pluck it from his fingers and pop it in his own mouth. Merlin threw his hands up in defeat.

"So, what is the topic for this particular round of girl talk?" Gwaine asked eagerly.

"I may or may not have slept with Arthur at the office Christmas party," Gwen admitted.

"Brilliant! High five!"

Gwaine held up his hand. Merlin grabbed his arm and tugged it back down.

"No!" he said very firmly, like he was scolding a dog. "Gwen does _not_ deserve high fives. Do not encourage this behavior."

"It's just a shag!" Gwaine said, waving his hand around. "Everybody loves a good shag. And I have to say, I think Gwennie here needed one. She's way too uptight."

"I am not!" Gwen exclaimed, affronted.

"Gwen, darling," Gwaine drawled. "When's the last time you had a day off? You're a classic workaholic."

"Am not!" Gwen insisted. She looked to Merlin for support, but her best friend only gave her an apologetic look.

"Eh. He's got you there," he said. "This is the first time we've been out for drinks in weeks. And it's been months since you came out clubbing with us."

"Clubbing isn't my scene," she argued.

"You never had a problem with it before," Gwaine said. "You used to come dancing with us all the time."

"So I'm invested in my work," Gwen said, holding her mug in front of her like a shield. "It's important to me. Why shouldn't I spend my time on what's important to me?"

"Because there are other things in life equally as important?" Merlin countered. "Like getting laid once in a while so you're not horny and desperate enough to sleep with your boss in his office?"

Gwaine crowed with appreciative laughter and clapped her on the back. Gwen just took another swig of her drink, wishing it were something stronger.

"It's not that funny," she grumbled.

"This isn't your first one night stand," Gwaine said once his mirth had subsided. "It's not even your first ill-advised one night stand with someone you shouldn't have slept with. What's got you so tied up about it?"

Gwen fidgeted in her seat, sucking on her bottom lip and remembering the sound of Arthur's laugh—the laugh she had caused by scoring a point in an impromptu debate of sorts, a battle of wits that she had won.

"Oh no, Gwen," Merlin moaned, slumping in his seat. "Really? Already?"

"What?" she demanded.

"How do you manage to fall for men so quickly?"

"It's not that quickly!" she shot back, realizing too late that she had admitted to the crime. Merlin raised his eyebrows at her. She huffed in frustration. "We've been working together for months. It's not like I could avoid noticing that he's ridiculously attractive—"

"Here, here," Gwaine said, raising his glass in a toast.

"—or that he's brilliant at what he that he's generous and kindhearted and does as much pro bono work as he can, despite his father's protests. Or that he's unfailingly polite to everyone in the office, even lowly interns like me. Or that he—"

"Okay, okay!" Merlin said, raising his hands in surrender. "I get it, the man's a saint. Why's he shagging interns all willy nilly then?"

"He's not," Gwen said quickly. "He doesn't do that sort of thing often; he said so himself."

"And we all know that all men are trustworthy in everything they do and say."

"Spoken like a true gay best friend," Gwaine mused. He continued on before Merlin could respond indignantly. "But this time, I think Arthur might be telling the truth."

"But you said he was a total manwhore in uni!"

"For the first three years, he was. So was I, to be honest."

"You still are," Gwen pointed out.

Gwaine didn't bother to deny the accusation. "The difference between Arthur then and Arthur now," he said instead, "is that he's not in the closet anymore."

Gwen spluttered into her drink in surprise. "Wait, _what?_ "

"If he's gay, then why the hell is he sleeping with Gwen?" Merlin asked.

Gwaine tsked. "Gays aren't the only ones in the closet, my dear straight friend," he said. "Arthur's bi. He had that revelation in our final year at uni. Made a world of difference for him."

"What do you mean?"

"He stopped sleeping around, for one," Gwaine told them. "He'd been shagging any girl who would wag her tits at him, trying to convince himself that he wasn't getting distracted by his mates on the footie team too. Once he accepted that he wanted to shag David Beckham as much as lovely Vicky, he didn't need to do it anymore. He calmed down a lot, focused on his studies. It really did him a lot of good, that sexual identity crisis."

"Ooh, should you be telling me all this?" Gwen asked suddenly. "It's personal! It's none of my business, and I certainly shouldn't be gossiping about him behind his back. That's awful! What is wrong with me?"

"Don't worry, Gwennie, he doesn't hide it."

"Still. I've no business knowing that if he doesn't want me to."

"I don't think he would mind. At least, not with you."

Gwen frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Gwaine sat back in his seat with a satisfied grin. "The way Leon tells it, Arthur's practically a monk these days—he's as much of a workaholic as you are. And he's far too noble to ever risk taking advantage of a subordinate, even on accident. If he broke through his own moral code just to shag you?" He shrugged. "I'd say that makes you pretty special."

Gwen tried to resist the welling up of warmth in her chest—and the more outwardly obvious blush and uncontrollable grin—but considering the groan from Merlin and the chip that flew through the air to land firmly in her drink, she didn't think she managed it.

* * *

Arthur leaned in his office door, hands in pockets and his Thinking Face on so that no one would stop and ask what he was doing there. From his vantage point he could just see the top of Guinevere's head over the partition between her cubicle and Sophia's. The end of one of her curls had sprung loose from her bun and was dangling just over her ear, swaying and bouncing every time she turned her head. He wondered how long it would be before she noticed it, and also if he would still be standing there and watching like a creep when she did.

"What are you doing?"

Arthur jumped and swallowed a vehement curse. He should have expected this; Leon knew better than to fall for his Thinking Face trick. He straightened his tie and turned to face his best friend of eight years.

"What?"

"You're just loitering in your own office doorway," Leon pointed out, as if Arthur hadn't realized.

"Just thinking," Arthur said on the off-chance Leon would accept it.

Leon narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Then he scanned Arthur from head to toe and abruptly turned to face the other direction, looking out over the office just as Arthur had been doing. Before Arthur could distract him from his quest, Leon turned back and said, "Have you got something going on with Gwen?"

"You know Gwen?"

Arthur could not have picked anything more pathetically desperate to respond with than that and Leon's surprise showed on his face.

"You mean, besides her working for the last three months?" Leon responded, and Arthur called upon all his courtroom training to keep from banging his head against the wall in mortification for forgetting that tiny but very pertinent detail. "We sort of grew up together. She lived down the street from me. I was friends with her brother, Elyan."

"Elyan!" Arthur said, latching on to anything that would shift the focus away from him gazing longingly at the top of Guinevere's head from a distance. "I've met him, haven't I? He came out to play footie with us a few times."

"Yeah, he did. Does _he_ know what's going on with you and Gwen? Because I don't, and I'm your best friend so I figure I should."

Arthur grabbed Leon by the arm and dragged him bodily into the office, closing the door behind them with a decisive snap and leaning against it.

"There is nothing going on with me and Guinevere," he said. "And I resent the implication."

Leon crossed his arms. "Are you sure?"

"What do you mean, am I sure? Of course I'm sure! I think I would know if there was!"

Leon made a skeptical noise. Arthur scowled at him. He ignored it with the ease of long practice.

"Don't think I didn't notice that you were both conspicuously absent by the end of the party last week," Leon said. "And your car was still here by the time I left an hour after you both vanished, so I know you didn't escape and go home."

Arthur's face flushed in a way it hadn't done for years and he cursed Leon's observant nature, even though it was what made him so damn good at what he did. He was a fierce cross-examiner, but he was also a very perceptive best friend.

"And now," Leon said, gesturing toward the door at Arthur's back, "I find you staring at her with hearts in your eyes and—"

"I was _not_ ," Arthur snapped.

"You two shagged," Leon said bluntly.

Arthur's head fell back to hit the door with a clunk that probably echoed through the whole office. Hopefully they thought he had thrown something at Leon; that would be far better for his reputation than them finding out he was a love-struck girl.

"Oh my god, you did!" Leon exclaimed, as if he had only been taking a shot in the dark and was thoroughly surprised at having been proved right.

"Shut up, Leon."

"No! This is big! Arthur, when is the last time you had sex with someone?"

"That is none of your damn business, you nosy little shit!"

"It has to have been at least a year," Leon continued, talking over Arthur's indignant replies. "You never even leave this office, much less go out on dates. Not that an office party shag counts as a date, but it's better than nothing, I suppose."

"Would you stop saying that?" Arthur hissed, feeling like he might actually spontaneously combust from embarrassment.

"Stop saying what?"

" _Shag_!"

"Why?"

"It just sounds so...so _crass_ ," Arthur said lamely.

Arthur didn't have any delusions that office sex was romantic or meaningful in any way. Really, "shag" was probably the most accurate term for what had happened between him and Guinevere—or, even more accurately, " _drunken_ shag"—and yet somehow it had felt like more than that. He knew that Gwen had probably forgotten all about it by now, or else looked back on it as a mistake or a shameful indulgence or whatnot, but Arthur didn't feel that way and he couldn't help that.

Leon was looking at him strangely now, head cocked to the side in that way that meant he was following a thread of evidence through to its source, picking at the knots until they came undone and told him their secrets. It was disconcerting being on the receiving end of that look, especially when he was fairly certain he knew what Leon would find.

"You really like her," Leon said after a long pause. "Don't you?"

Arthur scrubbed his hands over his face. "Maybe," he said, the words muffled against his palms. He dropped his hands again and wondered if he was pouting. He sort of felt like he was pouting. "Is that wrong?"

"Why would it be wrong?"

"She's an intern," he said. "She's twenty-three and a subordinate directly under my authority."

"You say that like you're an old man," Leon said with a chuckle. "You're only twenty-eight. It's not that big a difference."

"I'm still her boss!" Arthur pointed out. "We work together! Aren't there rules against that sort of thing?"

"Not that would get either of you in trouble, no. Besides," Leon said with a shrug, "her working here would probably be a good thing. You'd never find the time to see her otherwise."

Arthur glared at him once more, the really intense kind that usually made his opponent quake in their boots, but Leon had long since been immunized to all of his various nasty looks so he gave up on that front pretty quickly. "It doesn't matter anyway. She probably isn't interested."

"I don't know about that," Leon said, sounding strangely smug. At Arthur's questioning expression, his grin widened. "I may have been talking to Gwaine and—"

"What's Gwaine got to do with this?"

"Gwaine happens to be good friends with Merlin, who happens to be _best_ friends with Gwen," Leon told him. "And _he_ says that Gwen hasn't stopped talking about you all week. It's driving Merlin up the wall."

Arthur pushed himself off the door, standing straight for the first time in the entire conversation. "Really? Like in a good way or in a bad way? What did she say exactly?"

"Wow, you have it bad," Leon said, marveling.

"Sodd off," Arthur shot back.

"What are you going to do about it?"

Arthur stared at him for a moment. "Do?"

"Yes, Arthur, _do_ ," Leon said, slowly and clearly. "You fancy Gwen and, according to her best friend and Gwaine, she fancies you. Now what are you going to do about it?"

"Er. Well." Arthur fixed his tie—though he was pretty sure it had been straight to begin with, so he had probably just set it askew—and cleared his throat.

"Arthur," Leon said, frowning. "Have you never asked anyone out on a date?"

"Yes!" Arthur said immediately. Then he sighed. "Well. Sort of. Alright, not exactly. I sort of skipped the whole dating thing and went straight to the sleeping around in uni."

"And haven't had a single meaningful connection since?"

"Don't look at me like that," Arthur said, crossing his arms over his chest. "I get it, I work too much. But frankly, I enjoy my work. What's wrong with doing what I love and loving what I do?"

"Nothing," Leon said. "But it doesn't have to stop you from finding some _body_ to love too."

Arthur swallowed hard, the very idea of love feeling weighty and frightening. But Guinevere's hands were soft and her laugh was light, bright, and airy. There was nothing frightening about Gwen, for all her feistiness and her fierce intellect. He had never met anyone with a gentler disposition. Her lips had been sweet.

Leon's hands were on her shoulders. "Ask her," he said.

Arthur nodded.

* * *

"Something weird is going on with Arthur."

Merlin took the drink Gwen held out for him and downed half of it in one go. "Alright, now I'm ready for more Pendragon-talk. Go on."

Gwen rolled her eyes as she sat down, her own drink in hand. "Very funny," she said. "It's just that he's been acting weird around me for the last few days and I don't know why."

"Couldn't be the romp you had on his desk, could it?"

"That was two weeks ago, and he was _fine_ for the first week after," she pointed out. "It's only _now_ that he's getting weird. Isn't that weird?"

"Weird that he's being weird?" Merlin asked, face screwed up in exaggerated contemplation. "Nah, not weird at all."

"Alright, will you stop saying 'weird'?"

"You started it!"

Gwen heaved a very aggrieved sigh. Her nerves were done in and all she wanted to do was sleep. Or drink until she wasn't so damnably aware of every move Arthur Pendragon made, her mind running over and over every possible rationalization until she was almost dizzy with it. She couldn't remember ever being so caught up in someone, not even Lance and she had nearly dropped out of uni to _marry_ him.

"He keeps seeking me out," she said. "He comes over to my cubicle and leans on my desk. He strikes up conversations in the lift. He offers to carry my things for me on the way to my car."

"So?"

"It's just that all the conversations are... _aborted_. Does that make sense?"

Merlin frowned at her. "Aborted how?"

"Like, we'll be having a perfectly lovely chat and then he'll just _stop._ It feels like maybe he's about to say something and then he just makes an excuse and rushes off. Isn't that weird?"

"I swear to god, Gwen, if you say the word 'weird' one more time—"

"It's just not his usual behavior!" Gwen cut across him. "What do you think it _means_?"

Merlin sat back in his seat, nursing his beer and looking like he was actually thinking about it. Gwen worried at her bottom lip with her teeth and remembered that she was almost out of chapstick. Finally Merlin set his mug down on the table and leaned forward again.

"Sounds like he's chickening out," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"From what you've described, it seems like he's trying to ask you out and keeps losing his nerve."

Gwen shook her head, though her heart was kicking in her chest like a marimba drum. "That's ridiculous. If he wanted to go out with me, he would just ask."

Merlin shrugged. "Not all men like Arthur are as confident as they seem."

"Just because _you_ chickened out asking Mithian—"

"In my defense," Merlin cut her off, "Mithian was, and still is, _vastly_ out of my league. Someone like me couldn't just _ask out_ Mithian Montgomery."

"Oh, and I'm not in Arthur's league, is that what you're saying?"

"To hear you talk, Arthur Pendragon is a league unto himself," Merlin laughed. "But he's getting flustered trying to talk to _you_. He wants to ask you but he doesn't think you'll say yes."

"Mithian said yes to you," Gwen pointed out.

Merlin smiled, something much gentler than his usual teasing grin. "Not quite," he said. "In case you've forgotten, _I_ said yes to _her_."

He downed the rest of his drink and stood up before Gwen could think of a way to respond to that. He put a hand on her shoulder and said, "Think on that for a while." Then he tossed a quid onto the table, gave a cheery wave, and left her alone to do just that.

* * *

Arthur straightened his tie for the fourth time and wished yet again that he had worn the blue one instead of the red one. He was pretty sure that Guinevere liked blue better than red. Not that he thought wearing her favorite color would subliminally influence her decision when he asked her to dinner. Because he _was_ going to ask her to dinner. He had said that yesterday and the day before, but today was the day he would actually _do_ it.

Guinevere was just packing up her things as he approached, nudging files into neat stacks and tucking them into her briefcase, then tapping at the edges until she could close the lid with a click. Arthur leaned in the entry to her cubicle to wait until she was finished.

"Heading out?" he asked.

Gwen startled, looking up at him with wide eyes.

"Mr. Pendragon, sir!" she said. "I mean, _Arthur_. Sorry," she added with a self-deprecatory roll of her eyes.

Then she smiled at him, wide and genuine and brighter than the midday sun, and all of Arthur's carefully planned words evaporated in its warmth. He might have opened his mouth, but there was no breath in his lungs, nothing but a clenching tightness and a feeling in the pit of his stomach a bit like he had missed a step going down stairs only to find that he had grown wings.

A flurry of movement in his peripheral vision dragged Arthur's gaze away from Guinevere's smile; Leon stood across the office, using his superior height to spy on him over the heads of all the other people packing up to go home for the evening, and he was waving frantically, gesturing for Arthur to _do something_ other than stand there like an idiot. Arthur swallowed hard and turned back to Gwen, intent on asking the very important question he had come there to ask.

What came out instead was: "Chilly out, isn't it?"

The weather. He had actually just asked her about the _weather_. From across the room, Leon smacked himself in the forehead hard enough to leave a red mark. Arthur considered just bowing out right then and there, conceding the field to whatever suitor wasn't a complete and total loser, but Gwen was still smiling and he could never walk away from that.

"A bit, yeah," she said, standing up to retrieve her coat from where it was hung on the back of her chair. She pulled it on, tugging her hair free of the collar and belting it shut. "Makes me glad I work indoors."

"You look nice."

Arthur hadn't planned to say that, but the coat was yellow, buttery against her darker skin, and she was all but glowing in it. The shade brought out the lighter highlights in her dark eyes and he couldn't found himself leaning in to examine them more closely. The color was rich and deep—chocolate or mahogany or maple or any of those other terribly cliched descriptors he had been advised not to use in that one creative writing class Leon had begged him not to take—and so much warmer than his own cool blue.

"Thank you," Guinevere said, and Arthur wondered if she was actually blushing or if he was imagining it. She tucked her hair behind her ear but one of the curls bounced free again and he fought down the urge to wrap it around his finger.

"Guinevere," he said abruptly, determination welling up inside him.

Gwen bit her lip, her front teeth dimpling the rosy softness, and it was quite a long time before Arthur realized that he had not actually said anything else.

"Oh, er." He swallowed again and Guinevere was right in front of him, looking at him with those eyes and waiting for him to say something, _anything at all_ , and "I was...wondering...I mean, if maybe...well, er…" was all that came out. This was usually the part where he would cut his losses and run, throw in the towel, stage a tactical retreat and return to fight another day, but he had sworn to himself that this would be the day and he was _going to fucking do it if it killed him_.

"Arthur?" Guinevere said, and he shut his mouth with a snap, thankful that no more horrendously embarrassing stammering could get out that way. Gwen was standing straight and tall now, with that determined look on her face that he had seen the few times he had been lucky enough to witness her debating, arguing her point, defending a stance she believed in. She was fierce and strong, a warrior of a woman that he would follow into battle without a second thought if she asked it of him.

"Arthur, would you go to dinner with me?"

It took a moment for her words—the same words that Arthur had repeated in his head over and over again and which had so stubbornly refused to come out of his mouth—to register in Arthur's brain. When they did, all the turmoil and anxiety in his body rushed out of him in one explosive breath and he was left with nothing but a weightlessness that almost made him lightheaded.

"Yes," he said simply. "Yes."

There was that smile again, the dazzling one that robbed him of all coherent thought, but Arthur was prevented from basking in it properly by Leon's increased flailing. He shot Leon the most exasperated look he could possibly managed, hoping to convey the message that Leon was going to wake up with all his hair shaved off tomorrow morning if he didn't leave off immediately. Instead of quailing and retreating as he should have done, Leon just pointed up repeatedly.

Arthur's bafflement must have shown on his face because Guinevere turned to look at Leon as well. She then followed his gestures to look upward and promptly let out a squeak, her hand jumping up to cover her mouth.

There was a sprig of mistletoe haphazardly taped to the ceiling directly above them, the leaves droopy and wilting but still green. A chorus of whoops and whistles went up all around them, all their coworkers grinning expectantly at them. Arthur stared around at them all, unaccountably flustered by all the attention. Gwen was hiding her face in her hands.

"However did that get there, Leon?" Arthur called out, only mildly accusatory.

"Must have been left over from the party," Leon said, all faux innocence.

"We had a cleaning crew in the next day," Arthur pointed out. "And we have a janitorial staff that's come through every night in the fortnight since."

Leon shrugged.

"He stayed late last night," Percival volunteered from by the lift. "Stood on Gwen's desk to get it all the way up there."

Arthur threw his hands up. "Seriously, Leon?"

"I thought you might need a push," he said unapologetically. "And all the regular rules still apply, even if it's not Christmas anymore."

A chant started up egging them on. Guinevere had started giggling some time ago and Arthur had to laugh too. By the time they finally pulled themselves together enough to placate their rabid audience, the sticky tape holding the mistletoe to the ceiling had given out and the poor plant had flopped down onto the desk but Arthur didn't notice. Gwen's lips were just as soft as he remembered and all the sweeter for the smile that still graced them.


End file.
